Abstract Detail

Green Land: Multiple Perspectives on Green Algal Evolution and the Earliest Land Plants

McCourt, Richard [1].

Green Land: Multiple Perspectives on Green Algal Evolution and the Earliest Land Plants.

The unity of green plants and their green algal relatives is firmly established and has underpins exciting research in cell-wall biochemistry, transcriptomics, phylogenomics, and understanding of the origin of the diploid sporophyte. A symposium like this would draw phycologists and botanists, as participants and attendees, that should lead to a synergistic advance in this field. Evidence from fossils, cell-wall biochemistry, nuclear and organellar genomes, and transcriptomes have clarified the evolutionary history of the green algae that share a most recent common ancestor with the first plants to succeed on land. This symposium will bring together evidence from each of these fields to provide a comprehensive view of the invasion of land by aquatic ancestors, and insights into the morphological, physiological, and genomic features that made this possible. Green algae and plants are key players in an evolutionary story that produced the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems that we live in today. I can add a historical local link to this possible symposium in that the University of Arizona, host institution to BSA 2019, was the long-time home of Dr. Robert W. Hoshaw, a life-time member of BSA and leading authority on the conjugating green algae, currently the putative sister group of land plants. A symposium named for him would add a nice touch. His wife, Ruth Hoshaw, is 97 and still going strong in Tucson and would probably make an appearance at the meeting. Relevance: